Double Standards
by Three Falls Weyr
Summary: At the High Reaches, the birthplace of "tradition" a group of Weyrlings become a force for change. AU slash, het, multi-chapter, OCs. A story of the Three Falls Forty.
1. One

Disclaimer: Anne McCaffrey (and Todd) own DRoP NOT ME.

A/N: It's here, it's here! People keep asking, so I am now proud to present THE CHAPTER FIC that I (GoH) said would be written. A warning here, it might take time for us to get chapters out. I like an average of once a week but with two of us writing it may take a little longer.

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J'kai leaned casually against the wall of the Bowl, head tilted back to look at the stars. Every so often, his eyes flickered over the weyrs that lined the far wall. Finally, he nodded slightly and straightened up slowly, lowering his head as if he'd had enough stargazing for one night. He tucked his hands in his jacket pockets and strolled along the wall to the entrance to the Weyrlings' quarters. He walked along the tunnel to the first branching and swung right. L'say was waiting for him midway down the corridor, "Well?" L'say whispered, glancing behind him cautiously.

"Syneth's up there," J'kai said, "and Wintreth and both of them are sleeping."

"Excellent," L'say said with one of his charming grins and pushed open the door he was standing next to, slinging a bag over his shoulder as he walked in.

J'kai followed, blinking as L'say opened a glow basket revealing the larger of the two classrooms. From the bag came four sanders and the brothers set to work on the back table. As J'kai moved the sandpaper covered blocks in a circular motion, he let his mind drift away. As always, Genlith was the first one to come to mind. The young bronze was six months old and growing well, already you could tell that he was going to be a big bronze. He was already making attempts at flying, and if he wasn't as graceful as the blues and greens, then he was proving himself a power house in the air.

"What are you two doing?"

J'kai jumped; one of the sanding blocks fell from his hand as he looked at the door. Glow light glinted off the darker brown hair of another Weyrling and J'kai relaxed slightly. "R'nal," L'say said, "don't sneak up on people."

"What are you doing?" R'nal said as he came further into the room.

"Sanding these tables, it's a disgrace that they've been neglected like this," L'say replied calmly, running his hand through his blond hair.

"Why?" R'nal said, crossing his arms.

"Because I can't stand to see work left undone like this," L'say said airily waving his hand to indicate the tables, "it's just like an itch that I can't scratch, only worse."

J'kai looked up at his brother, but L'say was sanding as he talked, so J'kai opted to say nothing. As long as R'nal wasn't going to go running to R'kor, they should be in the clear. He knelt, picked up his dropped sanding block and began to sand one of the legs. "J'kai," R'nal said as if J'kai's movements had reminded the dark eyed man that he was there, "why are you going along with this? I thought you were the sensible one."

J'kai looked over the table at the brown rider, put down a block, and pushed some of his brown hair from his eyes, "What R'kor is permitting to happen is reprehensible," he said quietly. "I'm no revolutionary like my brother, to charge thread with a bucket of water. I prefer to conduct a silent struggle. This is actually my idea. No one takes care of blue and green riders, or browns to an extent, but we can." J'kai stood up, not that he was taller than R'nal, but sometimes just standing made people actually listen and think to what you said, "Look, R'nal, you can't honestly be ok with the way you're treated."

"I'm a brown rider," R'nal began.

"R'nal," L'say said, again waving his arms, "just because this is the way that brown riders have always been treated doesn't mean its right. Note, I didn't say fair even if it isn't, but it's not right. The key is that change has to begin somewhere, with someone. It's not always natural, sometimes it has to be forced but the more people we have pushing a change the greater the change is actually going to be."

"Say I believe you," R'nal said, uncrossing his arms, "what can I do?"

L'say chucked one of his sanding blocks at R'nal, who caught it, "Well, you could start on that corner there and work your way across the front."

R'nal turned the block over in his hand, and then walked into the classroom, "I can do that," he said and set to work.

J'kai shook his head slightly, reached into his brother's bag to pull out a screw driver, and knelt to fix the table's wobbly leg. _One_ he thought.


	2. Two

Disclaimer: We do not own The Dragonriders of Pern

A/N: the big problem here was which character we were going to use. We actually changed it a few times before we settled on Sh'toren.

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Sh'toren growled under his breath as he struggled with the heavy leather they had been given to practice their harness stitches on before making their first set of harness. "Your stitches are crooked," R'kor announced, making him jump.

"I know," Sh'toren muttered, flicking a glance up at the grizzled, blond Weyrlingmaster.

R'kor stared at him a moment, looking like he'd just bitten something sour. "Pull them out, start again," R'kor told him and moved on.

Sh'toren watched him go through his bangs. R'kor drifted across the room to where the quartet everyone referred to as the Elite were working. Sh'toren couldn't help but stop sewing for a moment to stare, L'say had a strip of leather in his mouth like a gag. J'kai, at R'kor's look, said, "It keeps him silent, sir."

"Indeed," R'kor replied, then bent over Iona, "Your stitches are uneven, Iona. If you pick them out to here and start over you'll be fine."

Iona nodded and said something that Sh'toren couldn't quite hear as she pushed some of her black-brown hair out of her face.

Sh'toren couldn't help the slight curl of his lip and he began to rip out his stitches. Of course, Iona could keep some of her stitches. The golden sheen of her dragon gave her that freedom. "Don't," Z'rat murmured.

Sh'toren glanced at the older Weyrling, "What?" He whispered, trying not to blush at the calm gaze of the blue rider.

"Don't take them all out, back up and start over," Z'rat said with a conspiratorial grin, he flicked a glance at the Weyrlingmaster. "Just don't let R'kor catch you."

Sh'toren nodded his head slightly even as he tried to keep the feeling of bitterness from growing. Cyanth didn't deserve to have to deal with those emotions from him.

"You have all come to see just how difficult sewing leather can be," R'kor announced, catching their attention. "In time, you will all make your own harnesses, so you must learn to do it properly. Unless you feel strongly about it, these harnesses will be the only thing you are required to make and one day, your harness will save your life." He looked around the class, "It is almost time for dinner, continue working on your sewing until then. After dinner, I will not require you to continue, but you must all remember that if I don't approve your harness, you will not be flying when the time comes." He walked out the door, shutting it forcefully behind him. The Weyrlings looked at each other in surprised. It was certainly one of the first times that R'kor had left Iona, L'say and J'kai alone with the other Weyrlings. It was a joke that R'kor didn't want them to be 'contaminated' by the others.

L'say spat out the leather piece, "If anyone else were that arrogant." He began in a low growl. Sh'toren jumped slightly, amazed at the amount of anger in his voice.

"Which is impossible," R'nal said in a casually amused tone. The brown haired brown rider grinned at L'say's scowl, "nobody else is that arrogant."

"True," L'say said after a moment, relaxing. "I cannot wait until we graduate. Then we'll really be able to do something about it."

"What?" Iona asked.

"The prevailing attitude of superiority that affects the bronze and queen riders in High Reaches," L'say said. "Just because gold dragons are the only ones who can lay eggs and bronzes are necessary to having a queen doesn't mean that they have the right to treat everyone else like they're dirt."

"Fancy talk," Sh'toren said, "from a bronze rider."

L'say threw his head up, blue eyes narrowed, but J'kai spoke first, putting a hand on L'say's arm to slow him down. "We were holdless before we were Searched. Even when we were candidates, we weren't given special treatment. It wasn't until people saw that we Impressed bronze that they started falling all over us and it's only because of Genlith and Kentrith that they act like that. It's absolutely ridiculous."

"I was a kitchen worker," Iona asked, "I wasn't even properly Searched. They just grabbed me to make it look like they had enough female candidates. I didn't even want to Impress, I just wasn't given a chance to say no."

R'nal nodded, "I'm from a small and poor cothold in Bitra, with a large family. Best I ever could hope for was to marry someone who had no brothers."

"Glass apprentice," Z'rat offered.

"Farmer," Sh'toren said.

Others began to chime in with their pasts, none of them had stories like L'say and J'kai, but none of them was children of Lord Holders, or prosperous holds. Sh'toren frowned, "I thought the Riders only took certain folk."

"They do," Iona said, "or at least, the dragons do. I overheard once that the riders might encourage someone to leave if they didn't think them unsuitable, but if a dragon Searches them, then they're meant to come to the Weyr."

L'say snorted, "Some of them all but told J'kai and I that we'd never impress and we were better off just taking a job at a hold somewhere." He regarded the leather for a long moment. "Obviously we listened well."

Sh'toren regarded the bronze rider, with his charming grin, sandy brown hair and good looks, and thought that he might have been someone Sh'toren thought of as a friend, if he didn't ride a bronze. _:Kentrith is very handsome,:_ Grevath observed, her tone sleepy and amused. _:He is also strong and fast. I like him.:_

Sh'toren started slightly, and then began to relax. "Your bronze," Iona said, "is going to be a green chaser, L'say."

Sh'toren flicked a glance up, surprised, he'd missed something. He tossed his head slightly to knock his brown hair out of his eyes. Then Iona's accusation and Grevath's words came together in his mind. "Oh ew, ew!" He yelped, jumping up.

"What?" Z'rat asked.

"Nothing," Sh'toren said, shaking his head, "just really bad thoughts." He sat back down and refrained from looking back up at L'say. "_Really_ bad thoughts," he muttered.

Z'rat snorted, "I'll leave it be then."

Sh'toren glanced up at the older blue rider and widened his eyes slightly so that his blue eyes were more obvious, "But, Z'rat," He said, "maybe I want to think those thoughts," he dropped his voice slightly, "about you."

Z'rat raised his eyebrows and flicked his brown eyes over Sh'toren for a brief moment, "Ask me again at the end of the Turn. Maybe I could accommodate you then."

Sh'toren looked away, flushed. His eyes fell on J'kai, who was watching him. "Maybe," Sh'toren murmured. J'kai nudged L'say and held up two fingers. L'say looked across at them, and then turned back to say something else to Iona.


End file.
